(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1983)
Continuing from last week, young Robert Morrison had arrived in America in 1801 after barely escaping from war-torn Northern Ireland. He, with is mother, Nancy entered the U.S. at New York City. They stayed there but a short time before moving to South Carolina where relatives were living.
Robert and Nancy remained in South Carolina about a year. In 1802 they moved to Kentucky and located near Flemingsburg. When he first arrived in the Bluegrass State, Robert Morrison had only the clothes on his back an two dollars to his name. However, he was appartently an industrious young man, sought and found employment and managed to accumulate a “nest egg” during the next year. While living in Kentucky, he became a Christian and joined the Associate Reformed Presbyeteian Church. In the fall of 1803 he was married to Mary Mitchell, a member of the same church congregation he had joined.
The newlyweds had sort of a strange honeymoon. The day following their wedding, Robert and Mary, with her parents and his mother and uncle, began a journey to Southern Ohio. They had heard good reports of an abundance of rich farmland in Adams County and had set out to find themselves a new home there. Upon reaching the county, Morrison used his savings to purchase a tract of land that now adjoins the east side of the hamlet of Eckmansville. It was then a part of an “unbroken wilderness” that took the Morrisons years to clear and improve. On their new acreage, Robert and Mary erected a two story log home which stood for over a century.
When the Morrisons first settled in Adams County, they immediately joined the Eagle Creek ARP congregation which met in James January’s home near present day West Union. Morrison, although only twenty one years old, was looked up to as a leader and helped organize the Cherry Fork congregation which split off from the Eagle Creek Church in either late 1803 or early 1804. Before this division, those members of the church living on Cherry Fork were forced to travel through seven miles of forest wilderness in order to worship at January’s. The new log church, built on Cherry Fork creek in 1804, was less than two miles from Morrison’s house. Shortly after the Cherry Fork church was erected, a burying ground was begun beside it, Robert Morrison digging the first grave. More about the Morrison’s next week.
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